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Subject: Branching factor and parallel search efficiency

Author: Tord Romstad

Date: 05:59:42 07/16/04


Which influence does the branching factor of a two-player, zero-sum game have
on the efficiency of a parallel search?  Is the speedup when using multiple
processors independent of the branching factor, or does the speedup increase
(decrease?) when the branching factor increases?  Intuitively I would expect
the speedup to increase with the branching factor, but I have no experience
with parallel search.

In case it is not clear, when talking about "branching factor" above, I am not
talking about what is commonly called the "effective branching factor" (which is
typically in the range 2-3 for a chess program using recursive null move
pruning),
but about the average number of legal moves (around 30-40 in a typical chess
middle game).

Tord




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